Sue is looking for one heck of a book:
I am trying to remember a book I read in high school, The only thing I know for certain is that it was published before 1996. I think it had a purple cover and it may have had the word Lawrence/Laurent on the cover (whether it was the author’s name, part of the title, or figment of my imagination is anyone’s guess). I don’t remember any names of characters but a couple of scenes stand out in my mind as they were so shocking to my inexperienced self.
The story begins with the heroine being left destitute and she goes to live with a distant relative who also happens to be the madam of a brothel (in France?). Upon discovery that her niece is still a virgin, she plans to offer her up to the highest bidder (though I don’t think the sex ever happens) but first has some training in the feminine arts by the other ladies and their clients. I think she first meets the hero while living at the brothel. There is a scheme to get her wed off and she leaves the brothel. At some point there is travel on a ship. My memory fails as to whether she is traveling with the hero or they both just happen to wind up on the same boat.
As for the scene that really sticks out in my head, There is a large suite with a lush bed (possibly on the ship) and there are cabinets and drawers in the headboard filled with all manner of adult toys. She (and I) were very shocked by a glass dildo which the hero explains to her can be heated and cooled.
I also remember this book having such a terrible ending that I threw the book across my high-school courtyard. Despite that, I would love to read it again with adult eyes.
I know it’s not much to go on but hopefully someone can fill in the blanks.
I did some Laurens googling, but either my Google-fu is bad, or this isn’t a Laurens book. Anyone recall this book?
This sounds like a Susan Johnson book, maybe? But I can’t think of the name! #HABOfail
yaa that sounds like a susan johnson. I remember her rouging her nipples, which i thought was odd. I think it was called forbidden?
Its definitely a susan johnson and the girl wasnt the m’dame’s niece she happened to run into the brothel one night after the untimely demise of her grandfather from whom she was to recieve a huge inheritance and no sooner had the poor dead grand pere’s body gone cold than the greedy relatives gathered to marry the poor gorgeous and newly wealthy niece to her stout hideous lustful cousin wherein her inheritance would be his and obviously theirs…. her stay at the brothel proved ‘‘educational’’ and it turns out the virgin was a siren and then some!!! she’s blond btw…. and the book is called…..TEMPORARY MISTRESS. hope its the one you’re looking for.
@Ashley… remember the part where isabelle accidentally finds herself spying on Dermott or whats his face….. getting his phallus mauled by the other woman?…. and on that note i needs to read that book again. #memorable’
Have to check this one out! LOL!
I am continually amazed and impressed with how quickly the bitchery readership nails these.
Sensational.
@ Adrianne… Thanks, but I’m on chapter 11 of Temporary Mistress and it’s not it (but I’m not at all upset to be reading it). And from the amazon sneak peek I don’t think it’s Forbidden either.
I didn’t want to add this originally cause I could be combining plots of multiple stories, but there is possibly a set of twins involved in her sexy-times training and I think there is travel in the southern US… or maybe France is all in my head and it is set in the south entirely. This is why I started keeping a list of what I read.
Co-sign on Susan Johnson. I’m certain I read this book, but don’t know which one it was. My mind tells me it’s one of the single-named ones (Wicked, Sinful, Brazen… but not any of those. LOL) But, reading all the Susan Johnson’s in search of this is no hardship. GL!
The Temporary Mistress
The Tattler – April 1802 It wouldn’t surprise you, gentle readers, to learn that Dermott Ramsay, the earl of Bathurst and favorite of all ladies, married or otherwise, has a new paramour. What may surprise you is her name. For she is none other than Isabella Leslie! The same beauty of the sizable inheritance who prefers not the ton but books, maps, and the family shipping business. You may wonder how a picture of innocence ended up in the arms of a libertine. Truth to tell, Isabella had to flee from her scheming relatives in the rain-soaked night and seek refuge in London’s most infamous brothel. There, with the help of the madam, she devised an unorthodox plan to escape a dreaded marriage bed. She would simply have to become unmarriageable-even if it meant public ruin. And who better to utterly ruin her in a mere week than a handsome rake famous for seductive skills? But gossip has it that Dermott may be developing a tendre for his temporary mistress. It makes for the most delicious speculation, does it not? For if it indeed is the case, what will happen when their week of pleasure is over? We urge you, dear readers, to do as we do-follow the affair closely, and with every hope that it will turn into this Season’s most delicious scandal.
Well…there is a scene in a Susan Johnson book called Forbidden that features a lavish bed on a boat moored on a river, bondage (of course), and a glass dildo. I just checked in my copy. But the rest of the plot doesn’t fit at all.
I guess this is another book with the same plot – er – devices. Sorry, couldn’t resist the pun!
@sue…oopsy… though it did sound like a susan johnson…. but the only one i know with twins in it is TWIN PEAKS but the story isnt what you’re lookin for…. but i get why you would want to see it through adult eyes i’ll be re reading all these books when im in my 20’s then again when im 30 and so forth….bet they’ll read differently. good luck finding this elusive book. :))
The Twins/brothel experience followed by marriage to a john (cousin of the brothels #1 client) and then living in the US is a Beatrice Small book.
I apparently have been reading all the wrong romance novels. I’ve never seen a dildo, glass or otherwise, in the books I’ve read. I feel somehow bereft.
I know you’re all thinking Susan Johnson but I’m thinking Bertrice Small. She always had odd dildos in there somewhere.
LOL! I nearly spewed my coffee all over the desk!
That sounds a lot like a novella by Beatrice Small called “The Awakening” published in an anthology called “Delighted”.
It does contain the madame auntie, the enthusiastic rogering by a virgin (miraculously chafe-free, anyway), weird dildoes and love of her life who whisks her off to New Orleans for more sexin’.
I don’t of course know the name of the book but I have definitely read at least one with a glass dildo. I think more than one. Book, not dildo. I always worry it’ll shatter. The dildo, not the book. I know romance novel don’t allowed such a thing to happen, but I have to pull myself out of the flow of things in order to reassure myself that it’ll all be ok, which is why it’s more likely to stick in my head, which is why I think it’s happened more than once, unless I just reread the same book without realizing it, which does happen. The book(s) in question wouldn’t be recent, I’m thinking early 90s at the latest, one of those globetrotting historicals.
Alas, Delighted, the anthology with the Bertrice Small novella The Awakening was published in 2002 and Sue is firm in believing it was published before 1996!
However.. FYI..Delighted also contains a novella by Susan Johnson!
Otherwise, I’m afraid I have no further suggestions.
@kkw—I’m with you. I have the same concerns: what if it breaks??!?
Spamword: chance87.
There’s a good chance there are 87 books with this set-up!
Could it be Jo Beverley’s Tempting Fortune: Portia St. Claire discovers that her brother’s debts have made him a prisoner of dangerous men. The price of his life is her virtue, about to be auctioned off in London’s most notorious brothel. Pub 1995.
@kkw: yes, glass does seem potentially too fragile for a dildo. But glass can be pretty strong, especially if cast solid rather than blown. Hmm, in this context ‘blown’ is a slightly distracting term.
At least glass would be more hygienic than some ancient dildos (or dildoes: it seems that both plurals are acceptable), which were generally made of leather. I am thinking of LONG before the 18th/19thC, of course).
🙂
They’re pretty thick so I don’t think a glass one would break unless you threw it on the floor. It’s not awakening, no dildos in there.
Okay, I have no idea of this book, but because I am the sort of person who has to “run and find out”, I googled images of “glass dildo” and MY GOODNESS there are a lot of them for sale out there!
Some of them really quite pretty; I could see putting them out as genuine “works of art” (if I was sure my mother wouldn’t stop by)
Anyone tempted to do a similar search should be aware that many of the pictures are eversomuch NOT safe for work.
(spamword: learned65—well, I wouldn’t say I learned 65 new things, but I did learn quite a few…)
So I read “surprise glass dildo” and my first thought was “oh my god I read this book” but that was like… a completely different book involving dildos and old men watching her masturbate. This might have actually been from a HaBO.
“Surprise Glass Dildo” would be a good name for an alt-rock band.
Apparently glass blowers routinely get requests for gongs and dildoes.
They might love making other things, but dildoes can be their bread and butter.
Sounds exactly like a Bertrice Small novel. She loves references to dildoes and there’s always one anal sex scene after which the heroine always declares “she doesn’t much care for it.” That’s when I always want to throw the book – me thinks she doth protest too much.
Ah, that would be bongs not gongs. Curse you iPad automatic correction.
Mary Jo, I don’t think it’s Jo Bev since Portia stayed firmly on English soil for that book. (It’s a favorite, what can I say?)
I think Cyn is the one that goes off to America?
I’ll never think of ‘blown’ glass in quite the same way again 😉
I vaguely remember the book Fanny by Erica Jong. This is a retelling of Fanny Hill, only better.
The young girl named Fanny escapes from her nasty family, and into a brothel where she learns a lot about real life, especially how to handle males. I believe she runs away from there on the night her virginity is about to be sold, and she ends up in a ship where things are happening. There may or may not be a glass dildo involved, my memory is fuzzy on details here, but it sounds a bit familiar. Unfortunally, all my books have been packed away, waiting for a house to move into, so I can’t reread this story to confirm the glassyness of content 😉
The Susan Johnson with the running away to the brothel, is as Diana said, Temporary Mistress but I don’t remember if there was the glass factor in that one! I’ve only read a few of her books but one of them was the glass dildo one…I want to say Brazen or Forbidden as those are the two titles that sound familiar. One of them definitely has the lush bed etc.
@KKW – I worry about that too when I see them mentioned, but it must not happen a lot if at all because they’re still around –
http://www.blowfish.com/catalog/toys/glass_dildos.html
I imagine that modern ones are – tougher – than historical ones.
@AgTigress – I know I’ve also read a historical with a leather dildo, precisely because I was concerned about the hygiene, and that disrupted the, uh, action, of the story for me as well. I don’t remember much of anything else about that book, either.
Why is it I have such a better memory for all the bits I didn’t like? Better still being useless, alas.
Also, better than Fanny Hill?! I’m off to read that while waiting for someone else to find this title.
@AnneC, I love Erica Jong’s “Fanny”! Um, her book, I mean. Sheesh. Ahem. Anyways, the dildo in that particular scene you are thinking of was definitely wood, carved up in devilish ways (ribbed for her pleasure). It is employed in the brothel by the evil madam and her bevy of luscious employees, in order to accustom our heroine to a lifestyle of debauchery.
spamword: boys91 – That lifestyle of debauchery? Definitely included over 91 former boys.
They make Pyrex dildos now. Which is awesome because even if you do manage to break them they don’t shatter in to jagged pointy shards, but small cubes.
Makes my lady parts feel safer. lol
It could be worse. At least the glass dildo didn’t sparkle in the sunlight………
Yes, I’ve been exposed to too damn much Twilight, and I’ve never even read the books!
It may not be glass, but absolutely nothing shocks me anymore…
http://io9.com/5344802/twilight-inspired-sparkle-sex-toy-heralds-the-coming-apocalypse